Contributed by Becky Brown / Living through a changing zeitgeist is a trip. Now into my forties, I see that conditions, styles and ideas that loomed as colossal in one moment can fade into obscurity in the next. My parents are octogenarians in the art world, and they’ve told me artistic and theoretical trends are always cycling; now I’m seeing it happen. When the essays on “Provisional Painting,” “New Casualism,” and “Zombie Formalism” emerged, I was in the throes and early aftermath of a graduate degree in painting from Hunter College. Like many, I thought they articulated something I was seeing and feeling but hadn’t yet named. I did not imagine that within a few years, abstraction would be on the margins of contemporary painting, with figuration taking center stage. Was this backlash related to those critiques or just part of a natural cycle?
Tag: Casualism
How the term “zombie formalism” killed the next generation
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In 2014, a single phrase reshaped the trajectory of contemporary abstract painting. When the late Walter Robinson – painter, critic, and veteran of the Pictures Generation – coined the derogatory term “zombie formalism” in an essay for Artspace, he set off a chain reaction that would stigmatize a generation of young abstract artists and cast a long shadow over abstraction in general. More than a decade later, the story of zombie formalism reads as a pungent example of aesthetic cynicism and jadedness – a case study in how criticism, commerce, and cultural anxiety can converge to distort and ultimately damage an entire movement.
Cordy Ryman, maestro of the quotidian
Contributed by Sharon Butler / While nostalgia and the yearning it precipitates may be gripping the art world, Cordy Ryman’s gently dazzling painting installations, on view at Freight + Volume, are unapologetically about the here and now – that is, what’s happening in one place today. Titled “Monkey Mind Symphony,” the show captures the distractions we encounter day by day, minute by minute. What could be more apt for our time than a visual language comprising small objects? Logically, they are the physical manifestations of tweets or threads, crafted easily, sometimes beguilingly unfinished in the traditional sense of the word, and arranged so as to radiate Ryman’s idiosyncratic energy.
Closely guarded turbulence: Amy Feldman in Stockholm
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Simple and blithely inviting though they may seem at first, Amy Feldman’s new abstract paintings, on display in her solo […]
Richard Tuttle sees the light
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Richard Tuttle, who has lived in New Mexico since the late 1980s, recently got an expansive new studio on Mount […]
Dona Nelson: Exuberant overworking as a strategy
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Dona Nelson says she�s lazy because sometimes she would rather read a book than work in the studio. But �Stand Alone […]
Quick study
LINKS:�Casualism in Puerto Rico, Kurt Cobain�s paintings, legislation to ease student loan debt for artists, an interview with Brian Belott, artists recommend books, Tatiana Berg […]
Quicktime: Fast, casual painting in Philadelphia
Contributed by Becky Huff Hunter / In his influential Art in America article “Provisional Painting” (2009), critic Raphael Rubinstein traced a history—from Joan Miró to […]
The gap between: “Unfinished” at the Met Breuer
Contributed by Sharon Butler / In recent years, artists have been interested in “slippage.” In painting, that often translates into an exploration of the space […]
Raoul De Keyser: The loss of certainty
“Drift,” the sublime Raoul De Keyser exhibition on view at David Zwirner through April 23, was organized around a group of 22 small paintings known […]
Interview: Clare Grill in Sunnyside
Contributed by Rob Kaiser-Schatzlein / In late November, I rode my bike to Clare Grill‘s Sunnyside apartment-studio, where we talked about her technique, the mental […]
Press release of the day: Giorgio Griffa at Casey Kaplan
In January Casey Kaplan is presenting work from the 1970s by painter Giorgio Griffa (b. Turin, 1936), an Italian painter known for his rigorous approach […]
Gedi Sibony’s backwards images in Greater New York
In “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1, Gedi Sibony, known for his early assemblages of carpet and drywall, is represented by nine framed pieces that […]
Art and Film: Jem Cohen�s faith in art
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / New York independent filmmaker Jem Cohen�s laconically moving Counting is quintessentially an artist�s movie. It is divided into fifteen segments, […]
VERNACULAR: A painterly conversation about abstraction
By Janet Goleas / Shared from the Hamptons Art Hub / The four artists included in “Vernacular”�Eric Brown, Sharon Butler, Andrew Seto and Joyce Robins�at […]
Quick study: Goodbye art world, Tal R, Anselm Reyle’s fall, Hollywood agents, Lucy Lippard’s advice, and a rant about education
When twenty-somethings realize being a part of the the art world often means enduring a hard, poorly compensated, unfair existence, sometimes they decide to pursue […]
Michael Voss: Beyond the absolute
The following is an interesting catalogue essay that critic Carter Ratcliff wrote for Brooklyn painter Michael Voss’s 2014 solo show at George Lawson in San […]
Art and Film: Revenge of the casualists?
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Joe Angio�s winning rock documentary Revenge of the Mekons concerns a defiantly non-commercial punk-era British rock band that has kept […]
The James Kalm Report: Painting in Bushwick
“As a longtime practitioner of painting, James Kalm has seen its fortunes rise and fall with the seasons. No sooner than it�s pronounced dead than, […]
Gedi Sibony moves beyond the Provisional
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Gedi Sibony continues to repurpose and recycle objects, but his new work moves considerably beyond the abject provisionality of […]
